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Greasing the skids for a privatization gambit. Although the amount of legal machinery required to restructure Amtrak to that degree probably means it'll take an act of Congress and some degree of fight in the Courts to actually take effect, so I give it low odds of going anywhere even if the...

Don't forget the required switchback ramps for changing elevations at any sort of sustained foot-traffic level for dwell swells. That's going to add several hundred more feet to the walk. At least the Fawcett-to-Cambridgepark vaporware footbridge is more likely to be a straight-line elevation...

City's still fucking-the-chicken on trying to get the private devs to pay for the footbridge. They've been dangling that for years, but the market's long since spoken...no interested takers, so it's at square-one same as it ever was. Showing the possible cross-track connections as formless...

The Federal Highway Administration strongly discourages (see under "Vertical Alignment" section) any grade changes at the crossing, and insists that they be as level as possible with no deviations of more than 3 inches within 30 feet of the crossing, which has been adopted by AASHTO as a...

They pretty much have fucked off from public relevance, and only exist right now as a de facto campaign arm of their recent ex-Board member Brian Shortsleeve for his doomed Gov. campaign. It's why they're hammering the FCMB bullshit right now in complete sync with Shortsleeve's talking points...

Amtrak definitely uses the fees as a big stick for turf warrage. Their fees NY-DC are particularly opaque because all of the NEC's power is single-sourced from Safe Harbor Dam in Pennsylvania, where 2 of the dam's 3 hydroelectric units are exclusively devoted to supplying the Amtrak 25 Hz...

Brookline actually installed all the street-side signal hardware needed for TSP on Beacon St. many years ago. It's the T that's been flagrantly dragging its feet on the final implementation. But, yeah, "controversies" about new-growth weed-like oak-tree'lets is very on-brand for the NIMBY's...

All of that requires town+MBTA coordination, and the towns spending some share of money for road construction. Much like the "Why don't I have a quiet crossing?!?!" controversies that are always percolating through local media, they'd much rather impotently scream at the MBTA for the pure...

There'd be no way to do the MA 140 one without blowing-up/rebuilding the 24/140 interchange all over again. The rail line doesn't have enough room to change elevation between Cotley Jct. on one side and 24 on the other, the brand-new interchange ramps would have to change elevation and partial...

https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticut/article/shoreline-east-electric-diesel-trains-ct-21349582.php ConnDOT strongly considering re-dieselizing Shore Line East because of Amtrak's sky-high electric rates on the NEC. :(

The long game's going to incur another $1B+ in semi-related costs, though, when double-tracking of the Old Colony Boston-Braintree mainline has to go on the table to stabilize the service. Because the service reliability Phase I subsists with is so far off the standard for the rest of Commuter...

How easily, though? Remember...these Associations are very sue-happy. They successfully managed to gum up the installation of something as mundane as ADA sidewalk ramp crossings for several years with lawsuit chaos. Hell, it's taken years to even audit the general (horrible) sidewalk...

The track class is going to be entirely Class 4 from Worcester to Springfield, but actual speed limits are still limited by the numerous curves. You'll probably see actual 79 on the Palmer-Wilbraham straightaway that was studied in NNEIRI for Class 5/90 MPH, but I doubt you're getting out of...

"PEDESTRIAN scaled STREETS with GATHERING space". . . . . .and 2,843 parking spaces.:poop:

Weapons-grade NIMBY's cosplaying as historical preservationists. Same playbook this time...mealy-mouthed appeals to "we support this...but...not like that." Followed by full-on stonewalling and threats of litigation or (like the sidewalk ADA saga) actual works-gumming litigation. And the...

The Beacon Hill Civic Association is a pox on the whole neighborhood. They managed to gum up the works for years on even getting ADA-compliant sidewalks with their 'tradition' racket.

Apparently it was a twin calamity of: Major radio blackout on the system making dispatch communication too intermittent to run trains at full speed. That's apparently why this delay rash spanned both northside and southside. Multiple improperly activated grade crossing gates due to road salt...

It's way too late to un-ring the bell of the car centricity of Alewife. A quarter-century of car-brained planning around parking capacity and garages makes it what it is. If they cared about transit access to the Fawcett/Concord Ave. side of the neighborhood, they would've put more movement on...

CTPS, 2 decades ago. Yeah, it's dated...but they were leaning hard back then on Cambridgepark being all built out by TOD by the time it opened so that growth was anticipated. Fawcett St./Concord Ave. development wouldn't have been factored back then at all because the land wasn't available for...

It can't be for transfers to the Red Line. It's a minimum 1500 ft. walk from an outbound side platform to the fare lobby...probably longer. And it's >2000 ft. from an inbound side platform or island with switchbacks. I think they're basing this totally on TOD, or someone's imagination of...